Question: Should I use PHP if I want to program the following?

[YakiSOBA]

Hi guys, looks like you have a great community here! Thought this would be the best place to ask this question...

I have basic programming knowledge (Grade 12 Highschool programming elective and a 1st year University programming elective)... this was about 3 years ago so any language I pick up now I will most definitely be learning the syntax from scratch; however I do understand the logic behind programming.

I've been playing these text-based rpg games lately (like Utopia, Mythos, etc) and I decided I want to try and make my own calculator. For those that don't know how these games work, basically it is all text-driven... no graphics, and it's kind of like a game of Risk -- you spy other players, calculate their total defenses at home (the sum of all their defensive units + any defensive modifiers) and then you send more offense than your targets defense to make a successful land invasion.

Anywho, this is all just for fun and as a side project, and I suppose I should start by using a language that would suit this pet project best. I know you could probably program a calculator like this with any language, but I want to make mine an online one.

The key thing I want in my calculator is the ability to simply copy a spy report and paste it into my calculator, and have it automatically find the relevant information and calculate the defense of my target. I think this is regular expression? I'm not sure... also I'm not sure how PHP works, how do you make a GUI, etc?

In all honesty, I just want to make something like this:
http://koti.mbnet.fi/njmythos/sessrumnir/attack/index.php

You would paste the spy report at the bottom and it automatically fills in the details. There is some source code available from this programmer but there isn't anything about how it automatically retrieves the information from the pasted stuff and calculates the rest.

http://koti.mbnet.fi/njmythos/sessrumnir/attack/code.php

So in summary, I want to update this guys calculator (he doesn't play anymore and likely will not be updating it anytime soon as it's been about 2 years already).

Anywho, any tips would be greatly appreciated!! Thanks so much for your time 🙂

-Yaki

[rsmith]

PHP is a server-side language. You will use it to process user input and render HTML accordingly. That's the reader's digest version. You can use it for something as simple as printing Hello World! to the browser all the way to full SaaS applications.